The spokesman said that the bureau sent an impact statement about the proposed budget cuts to House members in June. But he wouldn't disclose any of the impact statement's contents because it hasn't been released publicly.

The White House initially proposed funding of US$878 million for Census Bureau operations in fiscal 2007, which starts Oct. 1. The House last month approved a budget proposal that would give the bureau $824 million, while the Senate last week set its funding level at $828 million.

The Census Bureau in April awarded a five-year contract for the handheld rollout to a team of vendors led by Harris Corp. The pocket-size devices are slated to run Windows Mobile 5.0 and be made by a manufacturer in Taiwan. Census officials have said that the use of handhelds should save "millions of dollars" by reducing the time it takes to gather data, improving its accuracy and minimizing the need to process paper census forms.

But the costs of the handheld program and the census process as a whole have been called into question by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), chairman of a subcommittee on federal financial management. He has urged the bureau to conduct the census online, following the practice of Canada and several other countries. Coburn is concerned about projections that the 2010 census will cost more than $11 billion, almost twice the cost of the 2000 census, an aide said last week.